On Thursday our wine teacher, Diletta Frescobaldi, took us to two of her family's wine estates about an hour away from Florence. She is the 32nd generation of her family, and her family has been producing wine for 700 years. She knows her stuff about wine. The two estates that she took us to were Pomino and Nippozano.
Pomino is at a high altitude, it is very mountainous and has mild days and cold winters. The climate is ideal for making white and red wine, so at this estate we saw the storage for the fermentation and the aging of the wines produced at that estate.
At the second estate, Nipozzano, they only produce red wine since it is at a lower altitude where it is warmer so it is not ideal for making white wine. At this estate we saw similar barrels where the wine ferments and is aged, but then we also got to see a cool tradition that the Frescobaldi family carries out. For each member of the Frescobaldi family that is born, they have their own wine produced, 100 bottles for a woman and 300 bottles for a man. These bottles are stored at the estate and are only opened for special occasions like a birthday, graduation, wedding, etc.
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| Diletta and her bottles |
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| Caroline, Me & Stacey at Nippozano |
The trip to the estate ended with our entire group entering the Castle where we had a lovely spread of 3 types of wine, one white from Pomino and 2 red from Nippozano, and some bread and cheese. Before we left we were able to get some souvenirs ;)
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| Our spread! |
On Friday Caroline, Stacey, Taylor and I all decided to take a day trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We heard from others on our trip that there isn't much else to see or do in Pisa so we figured we would spend a few hours there and then come back to Florence. We left Florence at 11:30 and arrived in Pisa an hour later. When we got off the train we looked at the map to get to the tower and some trickster scratched it out...so cleaver, but luckily we were forewarned. Everyone was ready for lunch so we decided to stop at a little Trattoria along the way so we didn't fall into any tourist traps. If you ever come to Italy, eat in Trattorias. They have the best prices and really good food. Ristorantes are the most expensive so try to avoid, unless it says pizzeria as well or you can check the menu first. So we had a delicious meal and killed about 2 hours in that place. Then we continued onto find the Piazza with the Tower and the Duomo. We got a little set off track because Caroline thought she saw the Duomo but it was just another church so then we walked out of the city walls and finally made our way to the Tower. Little side note: Italian cities used to all be surrounded by walls, in Florence the walls have been knocked down but in Pisa they were all still standing which was awesome to see.
The Piazza has the Tower, the Duomo, the Baptistry and then a bunch of tourist stands with souvenirs and that's about it. So we took our touristy pictures, cause we had to... that's a given and then returned back to Florence.
Last night we had aperitivo at Kitsch, which so many grad students have been telling us about, and it definitely lived up to what they said. They had a large spread and the food was delicious but it was super crowded. If you're coming abroad to Florence definitely make sure you go!
This week it's supposed to rain the entire week until Friday :( but this upcoming weekend our program is going to Rome! I'm so excited for this trip and for all the ones that are coming up. The trips are going to make this last month fly and then back home for the summer! Here's what's coming up....
March 18-20: Rome with JMU
March 25-27: Almalfi Coast
April 1-3: Venice with JMU
April 9: Cinque Terre
April 16: Rome with Parents then NY
PS. Last night there was daylight savings in America as I'm sure you all know but what's weird is that in Italy they don't move the clocks back for another two weeks, so for two weeks there is only a 5 hour time difference... crazy right?!
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